Cronus

Cronus (Kronos) was the youngest of the Titans, the son of Uranus and Gaea, and the father of Zeus. He cut off the genitals of his father Uranus with a sickle and became king of the gods, but he swallowed his own children, fearing that one of them would overthrow him. Zeus, saved by his mother Rhea, did exactly that. The Romans identified Cronus with Saturn.

Cronus Family and Children

Cronus was the son of Uranus (Sky) and Gaea (Earth). According to Hesiod, the Titans were six sons and six daughters, Oceanus, Coeus, Crius, Hyperion and Iapetus, then Theia, Rhea, Themis, Mnemosyne, Phoebe and Tethys; after them was born Cronus, the youngest and most terrible of the children, who hated his lusty father (Hesiod, Theogony 132–138). The Cyclopes and the Hecatoncheires were also children of Uranus and Gaea, and so his brothers. Cronus married his sister Rhea, and she bore Hestia, Demeter, Hera, Hades, Poseidon and Zeus (Theogony 453–458). Hesiod tells that the Furies, the Giants and the ash-tree nymphs (Meliae) were born from the drops of blood that fell on Gaea when Uranus was wounded, and that Aphrodite rose from the foam around the severed parts in the sea (Theogony 183–206).

Chiron

According to a separate tale, Cronus was also the father of the centaur Chiron. Apollonius of Rhodes says that Cronus lay with the Oceanid Philyra while Zeus was still being raised in a Cretan cave, and that when Rhea came upon them he changed himself into a horse and galloped away; Philyra, ashamed, left for the Pelasgian mountains and bore Chiron, half horse and half god (Apollonius, Argonautica 2.1231–1241). Apollodorus also names Cronus and Philyra as the parents of Chiron, a centaur of double form (Apollodorus 1.2.4).

Cronus Portrayal

In the poems, the tool that defines Cronus is the sickle: Hesiod calls it a harpe, a long saw-toothed sickle made of grey adamant, and gives Cronus the epithet ankylometes, “of crooked counsel” (Theogony 137, 161–162, 173–181). Because the Greek words Kronos and chronos (time) sound alike, later writers linked the god with time, and Plutarch reports that some philosophers held Kronos (Saturn) to be the same as Chronos, Time (Plutarch, Roman Questions 12). In Plato’s Cratylus, Socrates offers a different explanation, taking the name from koros in the sense of the purity of the mind (Plato, Cratylus 396b). The two names are not the same in the older poems, where Cronus is a god and Titan, not a personification of time. This is also why the question “is Cronus a god or a Titan?” has a plain answer: he is one of the Titans, the older generation of gods, and Homer and Hesiod both call Zeus “son of Cronus”.

The Stages of Creation

Cronus played a crucial part in Hesiod’s succession of rulers of the universe – first as the rebel against Uranus, then as the king against whom Zeus rose.

The Castration of Uranus

As each child of Gaea and Uranus was born, Uranus hid them all away in a hollow of Gaea and would not let them come into the light. Gaea groaned within, straitened, and devised a plan: she made a great sickle of grey adamant and spoke to her children, asking them to punish their father’s outrage. Fear seized them all, but great Cronus of crooked counsel took courage and agreed (Theogony 154–172). Gaea hid him in ambush and put the sickle in his hands. When Uranus came at night, spreading himself over Gaea in longing for love, Cronus reached out with his left hand, took the sickle in his right, cut off his father’s genitals and threw them behind him (Theogony 173–182). Apollodorus gives a slightly different account: Gaea, grieved at the fate of her children cast into Tartarus, persuaded the Titans to attack their father, and all but Oceanus did so; Cronus cut off the genitals and threw them into the sea, and the Furies were born from the drops of blood (Apollodorus 1.1.4).

Cronus’ Rule: The Golden Age

After deposing Uranus, Cronus took the rule. Hesiod, in the Works and Days, says that the golden race of men lived in the time of Cronus, when he was king in heaven: they lived like gods, free of sorrow and toil, and the grain-giving earth bore fruit of its own accord (Works and Days 109–120). Many readers call this the Golden Age.

Cronus did not stay a good ruler. Apollodorus says that he again bound the Cyclopes and Hecatoncheires in Tartarus (with Campe as their jailer, Apollodorus 1.2.1), married his sister Rhea, and, since Earth and Sky had both foretold that he would be overthrown by his own son, swallowed each of his children at birth: first Hestia, then Demeter and Hera, and then Hades and Poseidon (Apollodorus 1.1.5). In Hesiod, it is Uranus who had bound the Cyclopes and Hecatoncheires, and Zeus who freed them (Theogony 501–506, 617–653).

Zeus’ Rebellion: The Titanomachy

When Rhea was about to bear Zeus, she asked her parents Gaea and Uranus for a plan to hide the birth and take vengeance on Cronus for her father and for the children he had swallowed; they sent her to Lyctus in Crete (Theogony 468–480). Gaea took the baby and hid him in a cave. Rhea wrapped a great stone in swaddling clothes and gave it to Cronus, who swallowed it without noticing that it was not his son (Theogony 485–491). Apollodorus adds that Rhea bore Zeus in a cave on Dicte and gave him to the Curetes and the nymphs Adrasteia and Ida to nurse (Apollodorus 1.1.6).

When Zeus grew up, Hesiod says that Cronus was tricked by the cunning counsel of Gaea and brought up the children he had swallowed, defeated by the craft and strength of his son. The stone came up last; Zeus set it in the ground at Pytho (Theogony 492–500). In Apollodorus, Metis, daughter of Oceanus, gave Cronus a drug that forced him to disgorge the stone first and then the children (Apollodorus 1.2.1). The brothers and sisters then made war on Cronus and the Titans for ten years – the Titanomachy – and won with the help of the Cyclopes, who gave Zeus thunder and lightning, and the Hecatoncheires (Theogony 501–506, 636–638; Apollodorus 1.2.1).

Cronus’ Ultimate Destiny

The sources disagree about what became of Cronus. Hesiod places the defeated Titans in Tartarus, bound under the earth, guarded by the Hecatoncheires (Theogony 729–735). In the Iliad, Zeus mentions Iapetus and Cronus sitting at the deepest limit of earth and sea, in Tartarus, with no sun or wind (Iliad 8.478–481). A different tradition has Cronus ruling the Isles of the Blessed: in the Works and Days, Zeus settles the heroes of the fourth age at the ends of the earth, in the Isles of the Blessed by deep-swirling Ocean, and Cronus is their king (Works and Days 167–173); Pindar speaks of the road of Zeus leading to the tower of Cronus on those islands (Olympian 2.70–77). In Latin poetry, Virgil says that Saturn came first to Latium, fleeing the arms of Jove after he lost his kingdom (Aeneid 8.319–325).

Saturnalia

Saturn in Latium

The Romans did not think of Saturn as a villain. In Virgil’s account, Saturn taught the scattered, untamed people of the mountains to live together, gave them laws, and named the land Latium because he had hidden (latuisset) there; the golden ages were said to have been under that king, who ruled his peoples in peace, until a worse age followed (Virgil, Aeneid 8.319–327). Livy records that a temple of Saturn was dedicated and the festival of the Saturnalia instituted in the consulship of Aulus Sempronius and Marcus Minucius (Livy 2.21.1–2).

Cronus Sources

Hesiod, Theogony 132–206, 453–506, 617–653, 729–735; Hesiod, Works and Days 109–120, 167–173; Homer, Iliad 8.478–481; Apollodorus, Library 1.1.4–6, 1.2.1, 1.2.4; Apollonius of Rhodes, Argonautica 2.1231–1241; Pindar, Olympian 2.70–77; Plato, Cratylus 396b; Plutarch, Roman Questions 12; Virgil, Aeneid 8.319–327; Livy 2.21.1–2.

See Also: Uranus, Gaea, Rhea, Titans, Zeus, The Creation, Titanomachy, Chiron